2a : Episode Five : Sticky Situations
by Taidine
Summary: XANA's attacking, Jeremie's in Lyoko, and the rest of the team is trapped by an advancing puddle of quickmud.  Joy.  Part of an alternate lateseasontwo story arc.
1. Chapter 1 : For Freindship's Sake

**Episode Five : Sticky Situations**

Soundtrack: Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" (Odd's song, for so many reasons)

_What was I thinking when I wrote this? Mostly I wanted Aelita to drag Jeremie into Lyoko because I thought it would be entertaining. Then I needed a plot, so it wound up being a kind of messy, cobbled-together episode. And the quickmud could have been way scarier then it is. Basically, too much time moving long-term plots along, too little of an episodic adventure, but it's necessary to the overall story arc._

_Oh. And bear with me, William's not that fickle. Don't worry, it shall all, kind of, be explained in time._

_Taidine_

Chapter One: For Friendship's Sake

Fall: A crisp touch in the air. A chill wind. Colorful, fiery leaves tumbling from their branches in vivid drifts. The start of the school term. New teachers, new students, and new chances. Also, apparently, planting season.

"Autumn is the time when we plant seeds and bulbs for next spring!" The short, ebullient teacher speaking already had a smudge of dirt on one cheek and seemed to be trying to fuel the class on pure enthusiasm – her own, if none of the students were willing to volunteer. From that quality alone you could tell she was fairly new to Kadic, if her bowl-cut black hair and negligible height hadn't looked unfamiliar enough to tip you off. For the very hard of thinking, her bell-bottom jeans (complete with appliqué flowers) might have given it away. She stood in front of a long plot of newly turned earth, a green Tupperware tub in front of her, exclaiming to her less then enraptured audience, mostly students who weren't in tutoring and were willing to give up Saturday to earn a few community service hours. "We have different plants here, so if everyone takes a packet of seeds we can go over how to read them! Packets have important information like spacing or planting depth…"

One black-haired, black-clad girl with an incredibly bored expression joined the line waiting for seeds, muttering under her breath – if anyone were to lean very close, they could probably make out the phrase "community service hours" being repeated again and again, like a mantra. Yumi Ishiyama wasn't especially enamored with plants, dirt, or Joyce – any teacher who insisted on being called by her first name was trouble – but after a week of grueling physical labor at the end of last term to make up her community service quota she had vowed not to wait until the last minute this time.

"Hey, Yumi," said another person she wasn't too enamored with as he edged up next to her: a tall boy with tousled black hair and an air of casual sophistication.

"William. Didn't know you liked plants," Yumi responded flatly. Trying to match him for smoothness was a hopeless endeavor, so she fell back on her usual technique – thinly veiled sarcasm.

"There's only one flower here I'm interested in," he answered flirtatiously. Yumi wanted to hit him over the head with something heavy – he was as subtle as a sledgehammer _and _insufferably lame. It was unfair that someone of such character should look good too. "Yumi, the grapevine's buzzing. There's a winter dance coming up – could you be convinced to…"

"No," said Yumi decisively. She was already exasperated. The last thing she needed was authentic William tripe, even if it did come from a meltingly handsome authentic William. She kept her eyes carefully fixed on the ground and summoned a picture of Ulrich. He was irritating, incredibly thick, but cute, a comrade in arms, an impressive fighter, straightforward and willing to let her go at her own pace, so there. But it would be a lot easier to recall these good qualities if William wasn't standing _right in front of her_. "And if you ask again later, the answer will still be no." She had reached the front of the line, and was obliged to pick up a packet of seeds from the Tupperware. "Please leave me alone."

"Uh…" William was momentarily nonplussed. "Yumi, I never…" Her full glare skewered him, and he switched tactics. "All right. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me." He shrugged, looking so glum she almost said she'd think about it, or called him back. But she had made a choice at long last. Hopefully she wouldn't be called upon to make it again.

Looking away from William's retreating figure, Yumi turned over the packet of seeds in her hand – appropriately, the bright yellow flowers on the front went by the name of forget-me-nots.

- - - -

The school was mostly quiet that Saturday afternoon, students taking their leisure outside or working through homework in their dormitories. Only one classroom was occupied, and it was just Aelita's luck that she walked passed it.

The pink-haired girl was ghosting through the hallways, looking oddly forlorn as her fuzzy boots tread on the linoleum flooring, when a muffled racket caught her attention. Following the sound down the hallway, she came to the language classroom – now filled by a dozen or so students shouting to each other in a jovial fashion. "Hey, Milly, finish that filler column yet?" "What should I use for a headline?" "Theo, how long does it take to write a sports article?" The sole computer at the back of the room was staffed by one young, dark girl who was alternating between frantic typing, frantic formatting, and frantic stuffing-floppy-discs-in-disc-drive.

Out of the chaos, a familiar face resolved like a bubble rising from a marsh: choppy blonde hair, thin black choker, pen behind one ear. Kloe was wearing a crisp, white button-up shirt today, not her usual long-sleeved tee, but her jeans were still held by that awful two-inch belt and her arrogant self-confidence, here in her own domain, was worse then ever. "Aelita! A word?" She called from the doorway.

Startled to hear her name, the pink-haired girl toyed with the idea of pretending she hadn't heard, sadly rejected it as unfeasible since she was only four feet away, and turned around. "Yes?" She breathed.

"We need a filler column, and I was wondering if you would do a beauty piece. Hair-dyeing tips and tricks or whatever."

"Uh?" Aelita still couldn't see quite how this related to her.

"C'mon, everyone wants to know how you do it. There are never any roots showing or anything," Kloe continued.

Something clicked. "Oh," Aelita giggled, "I don't dye my hair – I'm a natural pink." Quite done with that conversation, she pivoted on her toe and resumed walking down the hall, leaving Kloe to stare after her and wonder whom the joke was on.

"All right," the reporter muttered, "I'll ask Odd…"

Traumatic encounters were not over for the natural pink, though. She padded down the hallway in silence, turned onto an echoing stairwell, descended to the ground floor, and angled towards the exit. She almost made it, too, when a smooth masculine voice greeted her and a tall boy sauntered up beside her. "Oh – hello, William. Is the tutoring session over, then?" That was the only class being taught today, math or physics or something. Odd and Ulrich had both opted to attend, but it was a subject Aelita was doing well in, so she had skipped it.

"No," William answered, "Just passing through."

"I see," said Aelita, and sped up her pace. He was standing a touch too close for comfort.

He matched her easily. "Actually… to be honest, I was kind of hoping to run into you." The exit was so very close… "You've heard there's a dance coming up, right?"

Aelita had to slow down at the implicit query. "I thought you wanted to go with Yumi!"

"Ah… Yumi. She's always putting herself out into the world, y'know? I should have met some other girls first. I… thought Yumi was something she's not." They had reached the exit. William held the door, but Aelita was hooked now.

"What's that?"

"Well… smart. Or… you know. Yumi has good grades, but she's really a jock. While you, Aelita –" He broke off. "I'm sorry. Would you consider going to the dance with me?"

The school gardens beckoned. Suddenly there was someone Aelita deeply, urgently needed to see. "I'll… think about it," she stammered, and ducked around the corner of the building. He didn't follow. After looking left and right to reassure herself of this, she darted into the woods.

- - - -

Not far from the school, deep under the dilapidated hulk of the ancient Factory, a blonde boy in too-short khakis sat at a computer screen, typing. Lines of fluorescent green code danced across the monitor and reflected on his glasses, incomprehensible numbers and symbols… except they must have been comprehensible to him, because he was changing them, cutting a line here, shifting another there, tinkering with a program of ludicrous complexity. Here was the last student in the school who needed tutoring, sitting in a cavernous underground room full of pipes and cables, communing with his computer.

Behind him, a pair of thick, weathered metal doors held shut with an intricate circular mechanism disengaged, clicking and hissing. A girl in pink stepped out and walked over to his chair. "Jeremie?"

He looked up at the sound of his name. "Hello, Aelita." His voice was less then chipper. "I'm working on a way to repair the return to the past program, but I think I've hit a dead end. If I didn't know better, I'd say this wasn't ghosts at all. It looks so… deliberate!"

Aelita shook her head. "Sabotage? But who would – and who could?"

"Exactly," said Jeremie, "It has to be just some accident. Just harder to fix then I thought."

Aelita took a deep breath. She had been planning to bring this up since her escape from William, but she wasn't quite sure how Jeremie would react. "Maybe it will make more sense if you look at it from the inside."

He was back to his typing. "What do you mean, Aelita?"

She was forced to take another deep breath. "Jeremie, I want you to come into Lyoko with me."

"Someone has to operate the computer, you know. But I can virtualize you, if you think it will help."

The deep breath turned into a sigh. For a genius, he certainly could be thick. "I don't think you understand, Jeremie. You showed me Earth, and it's beautiful. Now it's my turn. I want to show you Lyoko. You're going to shut down the supercomputer now – I don't know if I'll ever get another chance."

"Aelita, are you okay?" Jeremie looked up again; his friend nodded with a touch of melancholy. "I don't go into Lyoko! Besides, XANA could launch an attack at any time."

"But he's not attacking now. Please, Jeremie?" She rested both hands on his shoulders, and he found himself giving in.

"All right. I'll program the computer to pull me out after a half an hour." Aelita looked at him pleadingly. "An hour," he amended, minimizing the program he was working on and opening a new window.

"I'll set up a character template," Aelita said cheerily.

"I don't need a template, I'm not-"

"Yes, you do. Hurry up."

_PS – Thanks to AussieUlrich, who's been kind enough to review every episode so far!_

_Taidine_


	2. Chapter 2 : Ties that bind, ties that

**Episode Five : Sticky Situations**

Soundtrack: Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" (Odd's song, for so many reasons)

Chapter Two: Ties that Bind, Ties that Break 

In a classroom on the first floor, a handful of students stared longingly out the window as the interminable tutoring session wound to a close. The tall, grey-haired teacher in front of the board had erased a patch of equations in favor of an e-mail address – HertzFr. - and was explaining why to her lackluster class. "The internet is the greatest tool we have access to in this global communications age, and e-mail is the communication of the future. Therefore, I will be posting the homework and extra credit assignments on a blog. Please e-mail me for a link. Finally, I am passing around a sheet of paper – please write your e-mail and screen name."

She handed a loose-leaf to a boy with improbably spiked blonde hair and a logo of a dog on his shirt; he scribbled down PurpleCatBoy and passed it on to the serious-looking, brown-haired boy sitting next to him. "The communication of the future? We've been using it for years – is this the first time she's heard about it?" His friend shrugged, not inclined to carry on the joke.

Four desks down, a black-haired girl wearing enough makeup to clog a drain signed Princessofhearts with a flourish and ran an inquisitive eye over the other names on the list. One stopped her; raising both eyebrows, her expression went from inquisitive to incredulous. She lifted her startled gaze and directed a vicious, disbelieving glare across the room at the chatty boy with the gravity-defying hair.

"You can leave as soon as you've put your name on the sheet," the teacher added. The two boys at the front popped out of their chairs with alacrity and bolted for the doors. The black-haired girl beckoned to a pair of cronies seated behind her and followed nearly as quickly.

The classroom door opened onto a hall, which in turn opened onto a sunny but chill patch of the school gardens. "I don't know if I'm going to pass this test," the brown haired boy was saying grimly, "I might have to get Jeremie's help on the whole logarithms thing…"

"Don't sweat it," the other boy responded in a much higher voice, "we'll probably have one or two questions, but-"

"Odd!" The girl interrupted shrilly.

The blonde looked over his shoulder. "Nice to see you too, Sissi. So the proble-"

"Odd, your screen name is PurpleCatBoy?" She asked as she caught up, a little breathless but with undertones of menace.

"Um… yeah?" He answered dubiously.

She looked like she was preparing to slap him. He rapidly backed away. "Did you ever IM someone called Princessofhearts?"

Odd suddenly saw where this was going. Last term, he had met a girl calling herself Princessofhearts in a chat room on line where she had been asking if anything rhymed with 'purple.' They had set up a regular contact, and he had grown to like her – while her poetry was awful, plagiarized, or both, she had turned out to be witty, surprisingly insightful, and sometimes even funny. When he had found out she was a student at Kadic, he had been… pretty psyched, to tell the truth. They had arranged a meeting; he had found out she was Sissi; communication had ceased. So he replied with some caution. "Ah… maybe. Why do you ask?" Maybe she wouldn't remember.

While Sissi couldn't look any more surprised at this point, she could look more wrathful. "Because when I arrange a meeting with someone, I expect them to show up!" She stood on her tiptoes and shoved her face forward, so her face was only inches away. "You knew, of course. I'm sure you and your friends found it _quite _amusing to leave me standing at the vending machines." Odd quavered. She was wearing a tremendous amount of mascara. "I should have guessed from the quality of humor."

Done, she dropped back onto flat feet and stalked down the hall, pausing once a few yards away to look back over her shoulder and add, voice full of scorn, "I hope you're happy."

Odd watched her go, blinking. "I think she might be overreacting. Just a little."

His friend smiled puckishly. "Nah. I think she _likes _you."

Odd grimaced. "Yech. Come off it, Ulrich."

"Hey, I have a lot of experience with these things."

- - - -

In the scanner room below the Factory, machinery rattled and groaned. Two scanner tubes slid open, and two students stepped inside. Golden light burst from the floor; Aelita smiled and closed her eyes. "Scanner, Aelita," she murmured, "Scanner, Jeremie."

A burst of air caught her, making her pink hair stand on end. She could imagine the computer operator standing in the opposite tube, hair floating upward, glasses trying to drift off his nose. "Transfer, Jeremie," she said into the air, "Transfer, Aelita." Blackness swallowed her, atoms disassociating, every particle in her body simultaneously translated into computer code. She couldn't say it, but she thought it…

_Virtualization._

Weight and gravity reasserted themselves. Aelita instinctively bent her knees to absorb the shock of landing, but next to her Jeremie tumbled to the forest floor with an undignified "Oof!"

Aelita extended a hand to help her friend up. "Always forget about that drop," he muttered, accepting her help to regain his feet, then reaching up to fix his glasses. "Umm… this isn't how I usually look in Lyoko."

"Of course not. I used my template, adjusted to accept new appearance input. And I changed the outfit," Aelita explained. The practical result of this was that Jeremie, for the most part, looked normal - with the addition of elf ears, thinner glasses, and a blue-and-khaki outfit with a suggestion of medieval times.

"Oh…" he shrugged, looking around. They were in the forest sector, on a wide island with a trio of broad-trunk trees in the center. "Well, I guess we should get to a Tower. From there, I can access the core codes to get a…"

"Jeremie," Aelita interrupted, "stop thinking so hard for a minute. The core codes are all around you!"

He squinted, looked around, and donned an expression of intense concentration. There wasn't anything there – or rather, it was all being translated into visual, aural, and tactile representations. He couldn't get any more information out of this then out of the landscapes of Odd's video games. "I don't…"

"Relax, Jeremie. It's all there."

He made an effort to relax, letting the tension drain from his virtual form, trying to see and hear and…_ sense…_

And there it was.

It is, of course, all but impossible to explain using metaphors from the normal five senses, but Lyoko is a world of code. Numbers make up everything, and are translated by the people within into sights and sounds, but the numbers are still there underneath, and some quirk in Aelita's programming had always allowed her to sense that. When she applied her virtualization template to Jeremie, he had inherited that same quirk. So he could… well, see is the wrong word, but close enough. See the code.

"This is how you see Lyoko _all the time?_" He asked eventually.

"Mmhmm," she nodded in a satisfied fashion, "See why I felt homesick?"

Jeremie said nothing, pivoting three hundred sixty degrees on one foot to take it all in. All that potential ticking past beneath him – it wasn't difficult at all to reach out and change it.

An unearthly note shivered through the code; a faint white grid appeared, then solidified into the thin trunk of a fourth tree at the center of the island. Jeremie felt the strength go out of him like water and was suddenly struggling to remain upright.

"You catch on quick," Aelita complemented.

Jeremie grimaced. "Thanks – I think. But I still can't access the program I'm trying to repair. We should get to a Tower."

He could be intractable sometimes. "Alright," she allowed grudgingly, "I know this sector, at least. There's a Tower a few…"

Something red and deep thudded through the code, cutting her off. "Was that…" Jeremie began. There was another, regular beat.

"Pulsations," Aelita confirmed, "XANA just activated a Tower."

Jeremie winced. "No weapons. No backup. No-one even knows where we are!"

Aelita began walking. "Is there any way for you to devirtualize?"

"Not really. Someone at the computer could pull me out," Jeremie began, ticking off the options on his fingers, "I'll devirtualize automatically in a little under an hour, but I can't wait that long. If I lose all my life points, I might devirtualize, or, since I'm using your template, I might just go comatose."

"Too risky," Aelita disagreed, "Anything else?"

Jeremie shook his head. "I don't think so. I could call my laptop or the supercomputer like you used to, from a Tower, but I don't think there's anyone there to pick up."

"It sounds like our best option," Aelita responded, "I'll take you to the nearest Tower. If all else fails, you can wait there until you devirtualize."

"And you?" Jeremie gulped. A quiescent white Tower reared suddenly from the trees before them. By the pulsations, the active Tower was still some ways off.

"I'm going to deactivate the-" Jeremie grabbed his friend by one fabric wrapped arm.

"You can't! At least let me try to contact someone first!" His expression was so concerned she stopped walking.

"I'll give you ten minutes," Aelita allowed after an awkward pause. Jeremie released her arm as if he hadn't realized he was holding it. "Any more time and we're playing right into XANA's hand." She had picked up a few Earth expressions, at least.

Jeremie sighed and nodded. "Let's get to that Tower."

The pair began to run.

- - - -

When she saw Aelita, it occurred to Kloe that she had, in the rush of trying to get out the week's news, forgotten to visit the Factory this morning. Elyse was sure with a few more fragments she could figure out exactly what that program did. The editor resolved to go straight away… and promptly forgot when a minor photographic crisis demanded her attention, followed by a brief committee session on the lack of filler material. It was nearly half an hour before the paper was ready to go to the press and Kloe, promising to be back soon, was ready to go to the Factory.

She wound up running the entire way, flash drive banging against her chest – the two scooters usually concealed in the entrance tunnel were missing, and she couldn't skateboard for anything short of her life. As she raced along the dank passage, she assessed the inferences that could be made from this – two of the gang were probably already there. She would have to move with due caution.

When the elevator slowed to a halt at the computer-room level, she hung in a corner near the buttons, peering cautiously past the thick metal doors with their intricate circular locking mechanisms. It appeared empty; she leapt out before the doors could close on her and sauntered over to the computer.

A single window was open on the screen: it had a menu bar along the top and a bold display of numbers, counting down. They had reached 49:27, but she decided it didn't look too important and minimized it. Another program had already been minimized, and was more like what she was looking for when she brought it up: Line upon line of the incomprehensible code Elyse loved. Kloe triumphantly plugged in her flash drive and began to copy in an enormous swath.

Suddenly, a new window popped up on screen. Kloe jerked her hand off the mouse, wondering what she had done. It was the head and shoulders of an avatar, the sort employed in video games, and it looked startlingly like Jeremie, with more chic glasses and pointed ears. "Hello? Uh… Kloe?! What are _you _doing here?"

Sounded like Jeremie too. "Must be a recording," she muttered to herself, reaching for the mouse.

"It's not a recording," the Jeremie-avatar interrupted, "I need you to do me a _Kloedonotshutthiswindow!_"

She jerked her hand off the mouse again, cursor centimeters from the X that would close the screen. "Okay, _not _shutting. What do you need?"

"Somewhere on the screen, there's a bar with a countdown?" Jeremie asked. Kloe nodded. From somewhere off-screen, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Aelita's breathed, "is that Kloe?" but Jeremie declined to answer, continuing to instruct the reporter in an earnest tone. "On the menu, there should be a 'set' option."

Kloe tabbed around a bit and located the requested option. "Yeah."

"Okay. The password is Lyoko2, L-Y-O-K-O-numeral two. Type it in the box." Kloe obeyed. "Now set the time to zero minutes, ten seconds."

She typed it in, then hit 'okay.' "Done. Now what did I just do?" She demanded.

"Uh…" Jeremie stalled, "I'll explain later."

The window blinked shut. "You look cute in elf ears," Kloe told the blank monitor. _But I'll be hanged if I stand around here waiting for an explanation you're never going to give me. _The only real explanation she was going to get would come from Elyse. She hit the elevator button with the heel of her hand and headed back up into the world, flash drive around her neck.

- - - -

The doors to the scanner tube cracked open, and Jeremie staggered out. Virtualization always left him feeling faintly disoriented, and a pounding headache had come back to the real world with him this time, probably from using Aelita's template – they never had figured out quite how the supercomputer generated a person's virtual character, but messing with it was rarely good. Probably too many changes for his brain cells to cope with or something.

He didn't have time to coddle his head now, though. His friends were in danger! And the elevator wouldn't come. He pounded the button again: finally, the circles clicked and the doors parted. Jeremie slouched in and thumbed the button for the computer room, wondering what to do about Kloe.

When the doors opened, the computer room was empty. Glad of one less immediate problem, he plopped down in his swivel chair, put in his earpiece, and punched up his cell phone program. "Just stay where you are, Aelita. Help is on the way."


	3. Chapter 3 : Lifelines

**Episode Five : Sticky Situations**

Soundtrack: Supertramp's "Breakfast in America" (Odd's song, for so many reasons)

Chapter Three: Lifelines

Back at the school, planting day was still in full swing. The ebullient black-haired teacher running it had gotten through seeds and into bulbs, explaining to her disinterested crowd how plants like onions and daffodils stored nutrients below ground during the winter. A few new students had drifted up, courtesy of tutoring being over, among them a pair of ill-matched boys seeking their friend.

"Hey, Yumi," Ulrich muttered as they found her, on her knees in the damp soil, raking furrows into which she let a handful of minute seeds fall. She looked up, flashed him an I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this-either smile, and returned to her task.

Odd found a small, round, onion-like thing pressed into his hand by the teacher. "Bulbs have to be planted deeper then seeds," Joyce exclaimed to the class at large. Odd couldn't recall ever having seen a teacher so perky. Caffeine high, perhaps? It couldn't last. He took a step backwards, or tried to, and realized he was stuck. "Huh?"

His feet had sunk up to the ankles in a patch of mud. He wrinkled his nose and tried to pull one shoe free; the other sunk further, dark, evil-looking mud engulfing his leg up to the knee. _Not cool…_ "Hey – a little help here?" He called. The mud rose towards his waist. Odd knew he was short, but not that short – this was not a normal thing for mud to do.

Two hands grabbed each of his arms and yanked. For a second, he thought his shoulders would pop out of their sockets, then the mud let go with a squelch and he was lying on the grass, blots of dark goop clinging to his pants and shoes. "Aw, man, this stuff is _not _going to come out in the wash."

"And the magic words are…" Ulrich prompted.

"Thanks, Ulrich. And Yu- Sissi?" Odd asked, looking up for the first time. His more serious friend had obviously been one of his rescuers, but though the other was a girl with hair of the right color she was also wearing a prissy expression, a tube full of mascara, and a pink shirt Yumi wouldn't be caught dead in.

"Playing in mud at your age, Odd?" She squeaked scornfully, bending down to pick up the packet of seeds she had dropped, which apparently would grow into a bush bearing some rather interestingly-shaped flowers and the name 'bleeding hearts'. She shot him a glare as she stood up; it seemed the screen-name incident had been forgotten and they could resume their usual attitude of affable animosity towards each other.

"Maybe," he retorted, "but I guess I shouldn't try to take over your job." Sissi paused to try and puzzle this one out, but whatever response she might have made was cut off by a burst of techno music from Odd's pocket. He pulled out his cell phone, wiped off the mud, and flicked it open. "Hello?"

"Odd?" Asked Jeremie's unmistakable voice.

"Hey, Jeremie! Do you have an excuse to get me out of planting day?" Quipped Odd in response.

"How about an activated Tower?" Said Jeremie, playing the straight man as usual.

Ulrich was pacing the edge of the mud patch Odd had sunk into. "It's not just a puddle," he called, "It's a… strip. And expanding."

Yumi, on the other side of the strip, eyed the distance between herself and Ulrich. "It's already too far to jump."

"Uh…" Odd temporized, "tell you what, we'll send Yumi to the Factory. The rest of us are kind of stuck."

"Stuck? What's going o-" Odd flipped the phone shut.

"Yumi! You'd better get to the Factory," he shouted across the steadily widening strip of unstable ground. The warrior gave a tight nod and dashed off. Odd sprinted for the large Tupperware tub containing seeds and jumped onto the lid, cupping his hands around his mouth to shout at the somewhat confused crowd: "There's been a minor clog to the… um… sewer main!" He improvised wildly, "resulting in some… instability to the, uh, fundamental molecular structure of the green." He had no idea what that meant, but it sure sounded impressive. "We're supposed to go to higher ground until it's been cleared up." He pointed vaguely towards the school buildings.

The crowd began to move in the general direction indicated. Odd jumped down and paced over to Ulrich. "How long do we have?"

His friend shrugged. "I'm the one who just got out of math tutoring. It moved at least two inches while I was watching."

"You – Odd Robbia, right?" The new teacher, Joyce, waded through the crowd towards the two boys. "What's going on here? Jim told me to watch out for you."

"Della-Robbia," Odd muttered, peering at the teacher suspiciously.

"See for yourself," said Ulrich, gesturing at the Tupperware tub full of seeds. The quickmud had crept under it, and it had sunk nearly to its lid.

"Ah. I'll. Get everyone out of here, then," said Joyce faintly.

- - - -

Kloe sat in the empty computer lab, logged into a private web chat room. +Hey, Elyse,+ she typed+Hoped I cld catch u.+

She hit enter. There was a brief pause, then a line of text materialized beneath hers. +Canadianbelle: Gud fr u. Where's my code?+ Kloe's cousin hadn't mastered chatspeak; she tended to type in perfect grammar unless she thought about it.

I e-mailed it,+ Kloe replied+Not mch.+

XP + Appeared on the screen. Kloe sat and waited for more. It was a few more minutes before Elyse continued. +K, I looked. Not the same prg?+

Got it from the same place,+ Kloe typed back, taking on a faintly puzzled expression.

It's not the vid. game,+ Elyse replied. There was a pause, followed by+Looks like part of ?security program? Inclusionary/exclusionary data. Picks who gets in or out.+

Kloe felt a sudden rush of excitement. Inclusionary? Sounded like Jeremie's group all right+Can you hack it?+

Don't ask me the impossible. I doubt there's enough,+ Elyse replied. But before Kloe could completely lose hope, another line popped up on the screen+Yes. I can.+

:) + Kloe typed happily, then, because that didn't seem to cut it+ XD +

So, tell me more abt Kadic?+ Typed Elyse, who liked to chat as she worked+Friends? Foes?+

…+ Typed Kloe back. After a moment's thought, she added +Well, there's a really cute boy cld William.+ Sending that in prompted no response; presumably Elyse was working on the program. +Sophisticated,+ Kloe tried, followed by+Cool.+ Still no answer from Elyse. +On the sports team,+ she continued.

As she debated what to put next, she was interrupted by a +HAH!+ from Elyse.

…+ Typed Kloe again.

Kloe has a crush,+ Elyse elaborated.

Nah, don't know William well enough to have a crush,+ Kloe replied. Good grammar was infectious.

Not William.+

You never start harping about a jock unless you have a crush on some googly academic. LOL. +

Kloe wasn't quite sure what 'googly' meant, but the rest was enough to prompt a rapid response, all caps+I DO NOT!!+

Sure (/sarcasm),+ Elyse typed+Remember Da Cheng?+

Kloe winced. + XP. Don't remind me.+

Your program's done. MOVE the whole e-mail onto a flash drive. The hack could damage your comp.+

G2G+ Kloe lied quickly, closing the window and opening her e-mail inbox. She would have loved to stay and chat with Elyse, but her cousin knew her better then she knew herself at times and that conversation could move rapidly into the awkward.

There was one new e-mail message. It had an attachment, the body text of which read:

MOVE DIRECTLY TO FLASH DRIVE.

PS Will ask for some kind of scan. Is there a hand scanner or similar near the computer you've been getting this from?

- - - -

Odd's sewer-main story had more or less caught on, although it had changed to a water- or possibly gas-main break, depending on whom you asked. No utility companies were called in immediately. Ulrich informed Ms. Hertz that Joyce had phoned the gas people, and Odd had talked a classmate who owed him a favor into telling Joyce that Ms. Hertz had gotten in touch with the water people. The deception would only take them so far, but for now, the students had been sequestered in the computer lab and told to stay put.

Sitting at a pair of desks in the back corner, Ulrich and Odd plotted their escape. "Eventually one of the teachers really will call in someone," Ulrich stated dismally, eyeing the doors. Both teachers were sitting in front of them.

"Hopefully _after _the Tower's been deactivated," Odd chirped back.

Ulrich shrugged. He had confidence in Yumi, but only one warrior in Lyoko had been proving woefully inadequate of late. "We should get to the Factory," he said, and by his tone this wasn't the first time.

"You need to get out of the school?" Asked a shrill, saccharine voice.

Both boys looked slowly left to the desk now occupied by Sissi, looking smug. She had lost her cronies somewhere, but standing next to her, arms crossed over her chest, was a tall, blonde girl with a slim black choker. If Sissi looked smug, Kloe looked like a poker player about to trump the table and win several million. Odd felt suddenly and uncomfortably like the idiot who had wagered several million. "Because Sissi knows a way out," Kloe grinned, "But if you go, we come with you."

"And you tell us what's going on," Sissi added.

"A water main broke," Odd persisted, "And the only way out Sissi knows is out of her mind, which doesn't help us."

The principal's daughter stared down her nose. "Shows how much you know. There's a door behind the Mouse Squad poster that lets out onto the back staircase and _I'm _going through it!" She stalked past the banks of computers toward the poster she had indicated. Kloe gave the two boys a 'your loss' shrug and followed.

Ulrich and Odd exchanged glances, then rose. "Alright, alright, we're coming," Odd allowed, catching up to them at the door. "But you don't want to come with us. It's all…" he gestured vaguely. "…muddy."

Sissi rested a hand on the partly concealed door handle and gazed levelly at the boys. "Hmph. You could tell me what's going on now and save me the trouble."

Ulrich tried to bull past her, but she moved sideways to cover the doorknob. "Nothing's going on, Sissi. It's just… mud."

"One of the teachers is going to notice in a minute…" Kloe muttered.

"Something is going on, _Ulrich dear_." Sissi pushed the door open. "And I don't mind a little mud. I was just planting flowers." She rummaged about in one pocket, found a packet of seeds, and waved them at Ulrich. They appeared to be for some brightly colored, broad-petalled flowers called 'impatients.'

Ulrich finally managed to get around her through the door; Odd and Kloe followed in quick succession, leaving Sissi to run or be left bringing up the rear. "So, where _are _we going?"

- - - -

Aelita stood tensely at the base of the inactive Tower, tapping one foot on the digital floor of the forest, listening to Jeremie run through his checklist. "Virtualization," he declared finally. A human shaped grid appeared, several feet above the ground; like paint spilling, color and definition flowed over it, revealing a girl in a yellow-sashed kimono and white face paint.

Yumi dropped to the ground, knees bent, already scanning the area for threats. "Sorry I'm late," she greeted.

Aelita smiled. "Don't worry. Jeremie and I were working on the return-to-the-past program."

"With the information from the Tower computer, I realized I was using the wrong decryption, and we managed to find a-"

"We fixed it," Aelita cut him off.

"I'm glad for you," Yumi responded. "Let's go get that Tower."

"Right. Sending in your vehicle," Jeremie reported. With a mechanical sound, the overwing materialized. "The active Tower is in the desert, so you'll have to switch sectors. Head south."

"Yes, sir," Yumi agreed, and leapt aboard her hovering platform. Aelita clambered after her, and they were off.

- - - -

Click-click-hiss, went the doors of the elevator, myriad circles turning and sliding apart. Four students stepped out. "How's it hanging, Jeremie?" Piped Odd.

The computer operator shrugged, intent on his map. "Aelita and Yumi made it to the desert sector, but I'm sure they could use some backup. Head to the scanner room."

"And us?" Drawled a voice that didn't really belong here. Jeremie swiveled around in his chair; behind Odd's purple swatched updo and Ulrich's set face, a pair of girls were eyeing him with condescension and curiosity, respectively.

"Uh… Sissi. Kloe. How did they get here?" Jeremie ventured, sounding as though he didn't really want to know the answer.

"They followed us," Ulrich replied glumly.

"Couldn't stop them," Odd agreed, more casual about the whole prospect.

Sissi walked around the two boys, into the computer lab. Kloe sauntered out as well, epitome of blasé. "There's a band of quickmud starting at the school green and expanding exponentially," she reported, "Within a half an hour, it will spread under the foundations of the computer lab. I don't know what happens then, but I wasn't sticking around to find out."

Jeremie stared. "You didn't warn the rest of the school?"

Kloe shook her head, not showing a twinge of conscience. "They'll figure it out. I'm not adverse to fighting the good fight, but something needs to be done, quickly, and I think this is the place to do it."

The two boys glanced at Jeremie. At his nod, they stepped back into the elevator; the doors slid shut, circles clicking. "What makes you think that?" Jeremie asked.

_Because I didn't dream about a policewoman trying to kill me, or a virtual world. Because if I dreamed about an evil supercomputer trying to take over the world, ludicrous as that may sound, Miss Delmas had the same dream, _she thought. "I'm a journalist," was her much shorter answer, "I follow my instincts."

Jeremie turned back to his computer and began typing. "Everyone ready?"

"Yeah," Ulrich replied dully. Odd's high-pitched, "Check!" was considerably more enthusiastic.

"Scanner, Ulrich," said Jeremie, "scanner, Odd."

Kloe watched with a sense of acute déjà vu as a pair of character cards popped up on the screen – a boy in samurai gear, complete with katana; and a boy dressed in purple boasting several interesting tattoos, cat paws, and a purple tail.

"Transfer, Ulrich. Transfer, Odd!" Down in the scanner room, hair floated in a burst of golden light.

"Virtualization!"

A pair of humanoid figures phased into existence above the virtual desert and dropped to the parched golden earth. "Aelita, Yumi, slow down!" Said Jeremie's voice, "Odd and Ulrich, one o'clock."

A white-and-blue vehicle skimming over the landscape pulled to a halt in front of the boys. "Hey," Yumi greeted. Aelita waved.

A pair of grid-delineated shapes solidified into Odd and Ulrich's vehicles. The catboy jumped aboard his skateboard while the samurai boarded his one-wheeled motorcycle. "Tower's straight ahead," Jeremie informed them, "I have to go get some hardware from upstairs – Sissi's going to take the computer."

"_Sissi?_" Asked Ulrich incredulously. Odd shrugged and kicked off his 'board.

- - - -

The instant the elevator doors closed behind Jeremie, Kloe pulled her ubiquitous flash drive from beneath her crisp, white shirt. "Couldn't have asked for a better situation. Unplug your earpiece, please."

Sissi was looking over the fluorescent map glowing on the screen. "I see the Tower – clear path straight through!"

Kloe reached over and unplugged the earpiece. "We don't have time for this!"

"We _always _have time to save the world," Sissi replied primly. Kloe plugged in her flash drive; a small box popped up saying it had found a new program, would she like to run it? She hit the enter key without hesitation. A small clock-shaped device, followed by a new message, replaced the cursor: Please enter scanners.

"Head down to the scanner room," Kloe murmured to herself, feeling those hazy, surreal memories surface like bits of vegetable in a soup broth. She tapped the elevator button. "Elizabeth, prepare to crack the DaJeremie code."

The principal's daughter glared. "_Sis_-si."

- - - -

"Megatanks ahoy!" Odd squeaked, cutting closer to his little convoy. Steering his board by weight, with his tail for balance and his hands empty, he was by far the most mobile, but he hadn't been that far ahead.

"Where?" Ulrich called, and Yumi added her own, "I can't see them."

The desert landscape appeared flat, but it was split by deep, narrow crags in which the golden waters of the virtual sea glittered; steering was consequentially more of an effort then it would have been on level ground. Odd's attention was diverted by the necessity of leaping over one of these crevasses, but he was ready with a retort when he touched down. "Who's the one who can see the future here?"

"There's the Tower!" Aelita breathed, pointing excitedly. Not far ahead, the sterile white cylinder rose into the air from its base of writhing cables, wreathed in malevolent red mist.

With a rumbling noise, a pair of metal spheres rolled up out of the ground. "Sometimes I wish I wasn't always right," Odd commented.

"Yumi, you and Odd take the one on the left," barked Ulrich, "Aelita, straight to the Tower. And Odd? You're _not _always right."

Yumi leapt off her overwing; Aelita grabbed both handlebars and squeezed, giving the vehicle an extra kick of speed. "Oh yeah? When was the last time I was wrong, then?" Odd complained behind her. The 'tanks stopped rolling and opened, preparing to fire…

And out of the deceptively narrow-looking gorge before her, like an anchovy's worst nightmare, rose an enormous, faintly translucent creature of tentacles and floating, graceful, implacable motion.

"How about when you told Ms. Hertz an emu is a kind of octopus?" Ulrich called behind her. There was a shriek of lasers being released as the tanks fired, but it was all background noise to Aelita. She hauled her vehicle to the right, but the scipazoa was quicker, lashing out its tentacles to pluck her from the platform of the overwing. She let out an ineffectual cry of terror and released the handlebars, seeking escape.

"Octopuses, ostriches, you can see the similarity." Odd's voice was the last thing she heard as she was drawn towards the creature.

The world flickered.

It was as though someone had flicked a light switch rapidly off and then on again, or a camera flash had gone off, turning the world negative for a fraction of a second. Aelita tumbled to the ground; when she rose again, she was alone.

- - - -

The doors of the scanner tubes opened; first Sissi, then Kloe, stepped out. "Did it _work_?" Sissi demanded.

Kloe shrugged. "Search me. I don't even know what it's supposed to _do_. We've been scanned; the supercomputer will recognize us as part of the Gang. Past that, I can't tell you."

Sissi seemed satisfied with that. "Let's go back up to the computer room."

- - - -

Jeremie wandered through the hall of derelict machines holding a single silicon chip. The supercomputer could always use a little extra RAM, especially since his and Aelita's jury-rigged repair of the return-to-the-past program had left it taking up more space then it used to. Better get back to the computer room; Sissi had handled it okay last time, but he felt better in front of a screen. Like he was actually doing something.

Suddenly, the lights flickered – scarcely a moment, but more then a blink could account for. An expression of concern crossed Jeremie's face; he looked around as if thinking, blinked in sudden consternation, and sprinted for the elevator.

- - - -

Aelita surveyed the parched, empty landscape. "Jeremie?" she called into the air, "Sissi? What just happened?" Even the vehicles had vanished. It was just her and the Tower, which, as the only available landmark, she struck out towards with great caution.

"Anyone?"

Only silence answered. She tried to make some sense out of the Lyoko code, but under the rhythmic pulsations of the activated Tower, it was difficult to distinguish any irregularity.

For several long minutes, she walked towards the Tower, slowly, looking everywhere at once. Then, a familiar voice: "Aelita?"

"Jeremie!" She exclaimed in relief, "What happened?"

"I'm not really sure," he replied, "But my theory is that some kind of massive power drain on the system caused a temporary blackout, and the resulting emergency reboot returned everyone to the places they were first virtualized. Something similar happened to the monsters, but since you're kind of a part of the system, you stayed right where you were."

Aelita raised her eyebrows. "What drained the power, then?"

"Don't know," Jeremie admitted, "can you get to the Tower?"

The elf rested one hand on the sterile, white surface. It rippled under her fingers. "Already there." She set her other hand on the virtual cylinder and stepped in. The rings of XANA's symbol lit as she stepped over them; a familiar sensation of weightlessness swept her upwards; she landed on the top platform of the Tower and touched a palm to the rock-steady grid of the computer monitor. Probably one of the neatest deactivations ever accomplished…

IDENTIFICATION: AELITA

CODE: LYOKO

"Tower deactivated," she murmured as the numbers rushed away into blackness.

- - - -

Jeremie's hand hovered over the 'enter' key, debating over whether to press it. To return or not to return? Kloe was obnoxious and Sissi was… Sissi …but was either of them enough of a risk to justify boosting XANA's power?

Of course, there was the question of the quickmud the others had mentioned. Kloe had said it was expanding exponentially… _It might be under the foundations of the school by now. _He had a sudden, unpleasant vision of what might happen then, even with the deactivation of the Tower; unwary students mired in the mud, refractory and computer lab tilted at unpleasant angles, the subsequent ruptured pipes and disrupted electricity…

Dilemma solved.

"Return to the past, now!"

- - - -

"Why is the elevator taking so long?" Sissi complained, prodding the button repetitively.

Kloe shrugged. "Maybe –"

A sheet of white light swept over them.

"–someone else is using it."

"Huh?" Milly asked.

Kloe looked around. The comfortable chatter of the newsroom swelled about her; in front of her, the redhead reporter looked up expectantly and a little impatiently. "Sorry. I lost my train of thought."

"I said," Milly repeated with a suspicious glare, "If Aelita isn't doing a column, what are we using?"

The pieces slowly assembled themselves slowly in Kloe's head. _So _that's _how they do it! _She grinned wolfishly. "I have the biggest story this school has ever seen–" _but maybe some secrets ought to be kept secret? _She wasn't sure what stopped her. "–but I'm not sure the public is ready for it yet. Pull that short fiction bit from Taelia…"

– Fin –

_Told you it was messy, confusing, and necessary._

_Taidine_


End file.
